480 Rough Notes on the controversy against Geologists. 



age. Such are the words of prophecy ; such more particu- 

 larly are the prophecies which have a double accomplish- 

 ment in the type and antitype ; and it does not seem unrea- 

 sonable to suppose, that the mysterious language in which 

 the future is shrouded, should also cast its veil over the 

 obscurity in which the commencement of time has been in- 

 volved. 



It is a great mistake in men, otherwise possessed of much 

 information, but who have not studied geology in its recent 

 state, to imagine that it is what it was some thirty years ago, 

 a mass of contradictory statements, on which geologists dis- 

 agreed, and were perpetually wrangling. Were it so, it 

 might merit their neglect or contempt. But Wernerians 

 and Huttonians, alias Neptunists and Plutonists, have long 

 since retired from the literary arena to repose in the recep- 

 tacle of the vagaries of Winston and Burnet; the better 

 parts of both their hypotheses being blended into the pre- 

 sent system of inductive geology. Of that geology there 

 are certain great principles and leading facts universally ad- 

 mitted by all who are conversant in the science, and these 

 are numerous, very numerous indeed, in proportion to such 

 as are still controverted on feasible grounds. The present 

 division of geologists into those who suppose that the alter- 

 ations upon the earth's structure in by gone times have been 

 caused by sudden and violent convulsive or eruptive action, 

 and those who are the advocates of the hypothes is of gra- 

 dual change, will, like that of Wernerians and Huttonians, 

 likely soon terminate in a union of forces ; for both appear 

 to be so far right in the views they maintain, and err only 

 when they deny or exclude altogether those of the others ; for 

 there is sufficient evidence to shew that certain portions of the 

 earth's surface have been tranquilly formed, and that others 

 could have assumed their present appearance only under the 

 influence of the most violent, extended, and sudden convul- 

 sions. Geology has become a regular science, in fact just 



